Reading

“Today, we’re all MAGA.” — Headline from The Spectator the day after an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, 7/14/24.

Decades ago, when a pasty, Jodie Foster–obsessed visitor to Miskatonic County attempted to render Azathoth back into the voidverse, the Daemon-Sultan’s psychic pustule was not immediately recognized. It wasn’t until the Blind Idiot God was en route to the Infernal Palace of Grotesqueries that He noticed the festering wound and altered course for the nearest emergency room.

Axios declared that Trump became president today. Again. He’s “pivoted” : Uh huh. Earlier today Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case . Yep, she did it. Here’s the Great Uniter’s response: It didn’t even last the morning. The good news is that this will break the short-lived truce that inexplicably forced the Democrats to become punching bags for the wingnuts to accuse them of inciting violence. Fun fact: Cannon was appointed by Trump after the election when Mitch McConnell forced through a bunch of unqualified nominees to the federal bench, a very rare occurrence. It was especially hypocritical considering that he wouldn’t allow Merrick Garland to be confirmed more than 8 months before the election in 2016 saying that it wasn’t proper for an outgoing administration to fill such a seat until the people had spoken. (He did the same with Amy Coney Barrett.) The gravedigger of democracy just threw another pile of dirt on the coffin.

Zoom has always included a clickable button/badge at the top left of its primary meeting interface window. Click the badge to copy the URL of that meeting. You can then, with just one more click in any messaging system, send that URL to the other meeting participants. Fast. Simple. Drop-dead easy. Elegant. It comes in […]

The post What happened to the Share button in Zoom? appeared first on Jeffrey Zeldman Presents.

.

According to Brady United 327 people are killed with guns every day in the United States. Over one million have been shot in the last decade. There are more civilian owned firearms than there are people here. America is awash in gun violence and it’s so ubiquitous that we only raise our heads once in a great while when the body count is shockingly high or the victims are particularly vulnerable, like elementary school children. But this weekend we all looked up sharply when a lone sniper shot at Donald Trump and grazed his ear, killed a spectator and wounded two others. These shootings are all horrific but this one was particularly shocking because America’s history of political assassinations is very long and we are living in one of our acute periods of political violence, whether from religious terrorism or unbalanced people who are radicalized on the internet. There have been attempted assassinations and violent threats against members of congress, the judiciary, the media and election officials in recent years and now the current Republican nominee for president, who also happens to be a former president as well.

Telling the truth is not incitement “I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell,” President Harry Truman once said. The Trumpist right is catching hell over the truth about Project 2025. Vox: Roughly two hours after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) blamed President Joe Biden. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” Vance, the odds-on favorite to be Trump’s vice president, wrote on X formerly known as Twitter). Vance was not alone. Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) wrote that “Joe Biden sent the orders.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wrote that “Democrats wanted this to happen.” Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said something similar. So did Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). All of this happened Saturday night, before we knew a single thing about the shooter’s identity or motive.

Western leaders claim disarmament will end Gaza’s suffering, but past and present evidence suggests otherwise. Dive into the real implications of these controversial demands.

The post Surrender or Survival: Why Hamas Refuses To Lay Down Arms appeared first on MintPress News.

Tragedy and false equivalence The press is already “both-sidesing” the response to the attempted assassination on Saturday evening. The New Satesman announces “The alarming rise of BlueAnon,” a left-wing counterpart to the QAnon movement. Liberals flooded the web with conspiracy theories about the shooting within minutes, announces the Washington Post, with speculation that the act was staged. (Yep, that occurred to me upon hearing the news too, but I wouldn’t blast the web with it.) Suddenly, there’s BlueAnon? Among “major” leftist influencers? That’s news to me (Washington Post): The shooting threw into overdrive a phenomenon dubbed “BlueAnon” — a play on the right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon — that refers to liberal conspiracy theories online. As more Americans lose trust in mainstream institutions and turn to partisan commentators and influencers for information, experts say they are seeing a big uptick in the manufacture and spread of BlueAnon conspiracy theories, a sign that the communal warping of reality is spreading well beyond the right.

Dan Kaszeta, who planned a number of protective advances and protection missions for the United States Secret Service, explores the challenges of USSS protection

I can’t believe you’ve never heard this album before. Dal Snagwood is one of the foundational comedians of the 1970s. He was so smart and incisive—almost more like a philosopher. Every comic from the ’90s says that this is the one that inspired them to try it, and those guys are usually right about everything. I’ll put it on right now.

This first track is my favorite. It’s so good. Now, to understand it, it helps to know that Chumpy Chuckers was a candy bar from the ’70s, because he’s going to be talking about them for the next ten minutes or so.

No, they stopped making them sometime around 1982 or 1983, so I don’t think that anyone has ever eaten one in my lifetime. I remember a school teacher sang the jingle once when I was in the third grade, but otherwise, I have never heard of it.

Vladimir Putin seeks to build a coalition of nations that either support its actions or remain neutral, thereby undermining the unified stance of Western countries on the Russian war in Ukraine

‘Dark matter is probably passing through you and me right now’: how one team is hunting for one of the great known unknowns

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Hunter-gatherer societies are highly expert in group deliberation and decision-making which respects both difference and unity

- by Vivek V Venkataraman

Read at Aeon

Song lyrics acted as a sexual script for aristocrats, revealing some edgy practices that ignited their imaginations

- by Elizabeth Eva Leach

Read at Psyche

A charismatic bishop led thousands to protest the government’s handling of tensions with Azerbaijan, but experts say the movement has proven only a flash in the pan